a. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to computer program development tools and specifically to automated tools for facilitating debugging of computer programs.
b. Description of the Background
Testing and debugging computer code is typically a large portion of the development cycle of a computer program. Several program development environments are specifically constructed to aid a developer in the writing, editing, testing and debugging of code by enabling the developer to step into and through the code, evaluate variable values, etc. Such development environments are not always available to those developers whose applications are not supported by the environments.
It is commonplace for software developers to insert print statements at periodic intervals throughout their program so that the state of the program may be monitored when the program is run. These print statements are time consuming to write and may require a working knowledge of the function of the code to place the statements in the proper locations.
It would therefore be advantageous to provide a system and method for automatically placing debugging statements into a program that may enable a tester or developer to efficiently trace the flow of the program and help in debugging the program. It would be additionally advantageous if such a system and method were adaptable to different depths of debugging and different debugging techniques.